Founder & Principal, Catapult Now, LLC
Marta Miranda-Straub is an Afro-Caribbean Latinx woman who has spent her life working towards building equity, inclusion and creating sustainable systems change. Her leadership, scholarship, and activism has focused on advancing social and economic justice for marginalized communities. She lives and works at the intersection of identities, place, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexualities, applying an intersectional feminist lens to all that she does.
Marta is the former social services ( DCBS) commissioner for the state of Kentucky. She has over 45 years of experience in organizational and clinical social work practice during which she has held multiple roles, such as tenured professor, social researcher, executive leader, fund development professional, psychotherapist, community organizer, advocate, activist, coach, trainer, facilitator and public speaker.
She is the immediate past President/CEO of The Center for Women and Families, a 6 million dollar non-profit, serving survivors of intimate partner violence, sexual assault and their families in Kentuckiana. Before joining The Center for Women and Families, she served at Eastern Kentucky University as an associate professor in the Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Work Department for 17 years. During her tenure she served as the chair of Women and Gender Studies and Dean of Multicultural Student Affairs.
Marta has received numerous awards for her leadership, activism, and program design, such as the KY Martha Layne Collins Women in Leadership award, Equitable Program Design from the National Health Law Practice for her work with EEO office of the KY Cabinet for Health and Families on the Limited English Proficiency Program. In addition she was awarded the Excellence in Leadership Award by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, she was named a Muhamed Ali Daughter of Greatness for her gender equity and erasing racism work and honored for her immigration and antiracism work by the Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression and Jewish Family and Career Center.
She is the recipient of a SAMMY from the Kentucky Coalition Against Domestic Violence (KASAP for over 40 years of advocacy in the gender justice/sexual assault movement. She was named a Compassionate Laureate by Mayor Greg Fischer and he declared March 17 Marta Miranda day. The Center for Women and Families named Marta a 2020 Woman of Distinction, and the National Association of Social Worker, Kentucky Chapter named her a Social Justice Star for 2023.
After retiring from The Center on February 2018, she re-launched her consulting practice Catapult Now LLC where she provides, organizational and leadership development, board development, executive coaching, strategic planning, retreats, facilitation and training services to nonprofit and for profit organizations and is a national speaker at professional conferences. On June 18, 2020, Marta was appointed by Governor Andy Baeshear as the commissioner for the Department of Community Based Service. DCBS is responsible for the largest administration of public services to children, adults and families in all 120 counties in KY, including child welfare, protection and permanency, adult protection, and foster care. It has over 4,500 employees and a one billion dollar budget. Marta, returned to retirement and consulting in February 2023.
Marta was inducted into the Affrilachian poets by KY Poet Laureate Frank X Walker in 2009, she is a published scholar and poet and her memoirs Cradled by Skeletons - A Life in Poems and Essays was published in Winter 2019 by Shadelandhouse Modern Press. Her illustrated and written in both English and Spanish children’s book Lullaby for Maddie was released on November 16, 2022. Her poem The Reckoning was accepted by Saraband Books and will be published in the anthology Once a City Said to be published in Spring 2024. Marta was recently highlighted as a Writer on the Rise by the LA Weekly in August 2023.